February 19th, 2014

Toby and I banked both Em and Elliot’s cord blood. We are very happy with this decision. I regularly receive letters from the organization we chose about medical breakthroughs and/or trials should one of our kids need the help. Thankfully, we haven’t had any medical issues with either of our boys. But you never know. And so we like having it there just in case.

Well, the new guy arrives soon, so I called to arrange a third bank setup. The tech informed me (yes she is actually medically trained!) that since the birth of Em and Elliot, they came out with another option.

Now, you can store cord tissue as well. In my very limited amount of research, cord tissue stem cells are a lot more like the ones we hear/read about on the news. They can do more with it. And you can use them between siblings (75% chance of a match). Even we could use it should we need it one day (50% chance of a match).

So, Internet, we are trying to decide if it’s worth the added expense. Right now, we pay about 125 a year to store the blood. That would double. That’s fine. But the initial fee is double as well, so we’re looking at a one-time feel of just under 3,000.00.

Money isn’t really an issue. I mean, it is, but we’d pay for this if we knew it would one day help any of us.

I plan on researching this throughout the day, but thought why not ask the Internet as well. Do you know anything about cord tissue banking? Are you doing it? Would you? Any biology nerds out there want to weigh in? Anyone know about what it might be used for down the road? I’d love your thoughts!

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2 Comments on “Cord Tissue Banking”

Enia said at 1:37 pm on February 23rd, 2014:

This is completely anecdotal, but a close friend of ours got leukemia at 26. If she had cord tissue banking, she wouldn’t have had to get a bone marrow transplant from a stranger. Get it. $3,000 is not that much money to potentially save your kid’s life down the line.